Reflecting on Morality and Religious Pressure

Why do my fellow Christians fight me on the elements of my personality which Christ cultivated? Within me there are countless, large imperfections about which they could warn me, but they concentrate their efforts to destroy those parts in me which express Love to the poor and marginalized; the parts of me which seek to deny myself to lift up the powerless. It seems like they seek to make me the Pharisees against whom Jesus spoke throughout the Gospels–the hypocrites who appear to have cleansed themselves of external sins while taking great care to nurture and grow their internal ones. My soul cries out to my brothers, “get behind me Satan! I’m doing my Father’s work!” and it shouts this not out of anger but out of love. Are we so blind that we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking that our evil desires (though cloaked in religion and twisted to look like truth) are in fact pleasing to God? It didn’t work for the religious elite then, so what makes us think that God will favor the religious elite now?

The Spirit in me and the scriptures both testify that God will always, ALWAYS favor the poor and the broken and the powerless over those who appear to be “correct” and “powerful”. Even if my brain can’t find an adequate answer to their twisted logic, God’s truth appeals to my heart–telling me that I may not understand exactly why, but their ways are dark. So it is and will be: I follow God even when the people who’ve taken claim to his name take a different path. I will follow God into the dark places to rescue his precious people even if it means that many of the Christians call me a glutton and a drunk and kick me out of their churches. After all, Jesus endured that first.

On the subject of morality, it seems that there are people who see two kinds of people in the world: those who seek to uphold morality and those who are trying to “lower the moral bar” so to speak. The problem I see is that people with this viewpoint tend to define moral behavior as behavior exclusive of external sins, but the term doesn’t speak to the presence of internal sins. Internal sins (conditions of the heart: jealousy, self-righteousness, judgmentality, etc) get downplayed for the sake of lifting ourselves over those who suffer from external sins (sins identifiable by actions: sexual sins, drunkeness, etc). In this way, we trick ourselves into thinking that we are justified in denouncing the evils of liberalism and homosexuality and alcohol consumption and partying when we have darker sins clouding our vision. We seek to remove sawdust from our neighbor’s eye without first removing the boards from our own. We take great care to wash the outside of our cups, but the insides are filthy. We love to call people out on their mistakes, because it feeds the lie that we’re better than we are–that we do, in fact, deserve love (which stares right in the face of the Cross and the Gospel of Grace). This self-righteousness seems to plague the church, so if someone is truly concerned about upholding morality in our culture, perhaps we should look first at ourselves and then at everyone else. Furthermore, when we stop viewing the world this way, we realize that if our “morality” is only a product of social pressure, then it is empty and worthless. In this way, we are locked in a pointless battle of who’s definition of morality is correct, ours or theirs? When we are freed from this, we realize the only universal morality isn’t measured by actions, but by the motivations which drive our actions (namely the presence of Love or lackthereof). The issue isn’t where the moral bar should be set or whose moral bar should be used; the issue revolves directly around our own loving and hateful desires. The battle isn’t between us and them, the battle is within each of us, cliché though that may sound. We are our own enemies. We are the primary opposition to the cross–not the muslims or the liberals or the homosexuals. Let’s stop scapegoating and own up to our own failures. Let’s really die to ourselves.

In Need: Can government help its helpless citizens?

I consider myself politically neutral these days, despite having been both liberal and conservative in the past. Something that always attracted me to the Democratic camp is how they seem to genuinely feel for the poor among us–something that seems to be a very Christian idea. Unfortunately, I soon realized that a big portion of their solution to the problem seems to be throwing money at the less-fortunate.

First of all, I don’t believe that’s a viable solution because I don’t believe money improves anyone’s lives. I really think we need other people who believe in us and who can encourage us genuinely–something I don’t believe a government is capable of providing (because a government can’t tell people to go love people in need of love). No amount of money can do that. This goes to show just how powerless a government can be when it comes to actually making a positive difference in the world.

Secondly, the Republican solution seems to rely on giving tax breaks to the rich and relying on complicated economic trickle-down effects to get money and resources to the poor (which, again, I don’t believe solves the problem). It honestly appears as if many in this camp are using this solution as an excuse to be greedy and cling to their moneys (which is interesting because that makes it seem that Jesus would side with the “godless liberals” over the Religious Right–although Jesus never seemed to fit in well with the religious folks). However, I do agree with the conservatives in that [I believe] it isn’t the government’s job to take care of the needy–it’s the Church’s.

So I love the passion for humanitarianism (a very Christ-like quality that doesn’t seem to occur too often in the Religious Right) but I also feel like their methodology is wrong. But to their credit, (and realize I’m not saying this is true of all liberals) if I didn’t believe in God, I wouldn’t trust the Chruch for much anyways–the next viable option would appear to be the government.

On the flip side, I believe the conservative side has the right intellectual idea, but they seem to lack the compassion to actually care about the needy in the ways that their God does (so it’s kind of funny to me the godless liberals seem to follow God better than the Religious Right–which leads me to believe that perhaps the “godless liberals” have a confused idea about God because of how us “Christians” represent Him).

So to awkwardly tie-together this loose, airy post… Basically I don’t believe it is the government’s responsibility, I admire the liberals’ passion, I am disappointed in the conservative camp for not feeling more emphatically on the issue (especially those who believe God would only ever vote Republican), and I think it would be ephing sweet if we all would stop arguing and handle this without going through the ever-complicated middle-management that is our government. That is to say, if the religious and non-religious, liberal and conservative, etc would take care of the problem through private organizations (who would be focused on the actual problem) and unaffiliated with any church or political movement or some other means. The end.

So I’m writing this on 10/08/08: It seems to me lately that the welfare system may only be 10% effective and the rest may be “wasteful”, but if you think about it, that 10% is still getting used and it’s not like the rest of us need that additional money anyways. I mean, if you have a car you’re among 8% of the world’s most elite population anyways. Moreover, if we were really interested in efficiency, we could always take a little more time and ensure that that money gets used effectively by buying necessities for the needy. So I guess I’m now okay with the Democrats’ passion and their methodology on this issue.